Sci Fi Short Story / Cat hybrid wants none of your vainglorious affection, thanks

[M—]

I recently reread Tanith Lee's Silver Metal Lover, where a major element of the story is that science has developed clockwork people who are sold as vanity entertainment devices, that the culture at hand eventually must consider just what measure of human these clockwork people are.

It reminded me of another story, where the vanity devices were genetically spliced feline/human hybrids, each 'batch' likening to a different species of feline and grouped in sets of three -- one male, one female, and one neuter with names like Tom, Queenie, and Cat. As I recall, the story protagonist found one cat-girl particularly lithe and beautiful and fell in love with her. She acquiesced to this for as long as she absolutely had to, and then, when the hybrids staged a coup or arranged to escape en masse or something, announced very matter-of-factly to him that she was leaving, that she was bitter about the humanity imperfectly spliced into her feline body, and that while he thought that he owned her body and soul, she wanted nothing to do with him and had arranged to become mates with a lion hybrid from another triad batch.

The story blatantly drove home the point that characters could have completely different lives and motivations countering what the point-of-view characters assume, but I was relatively young when I first read this and it was heady stuff for a teen.

I think I would have read this in the 90s, and likely in a cat-themed anthology. So far, I've looked through the the contents listed for the Catfantastic anthology series (I through V) and the more recently-published anthology Tails of Wonder, but nothing stood out. I've also looked at the novel Chimera and the Cordwainer Smith short story, "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell," which both had a 'uplifted' cat/humans, but those were not a match. Cats are a common motif in fantasy and science fiction and there are there are dozens of anthologies around that theme -- any one have any suggestions of where next I could look?

Thanks all for the help!

[Christine]

I'm sorry I don't know the answer... but I do really hope you find your book! The story sounds intriguing, and I'd like to read it also.

I just went to the Search tab and typed "cat anthology," and dozens of titles came up. Too many to list here for you, but several looked like fantasy or sci-fi collections with a cat theme. Might be worth a look? Maybe one of the covers will strike a chord. Good luck!

[M—]

Right, so the challenge with that is the GR Search mechanism is neither broad nor robust. The 102 resulting titles for 'cat anthology' do not include the 6 cat anthologies I mentioned in the OP, which brings in to question what other data has been omitted. Any resulting titles cannot be subsorted, so weeding out titles with inappropriate publication dates is impossible.

I usually have better luck using Worldcat's search program, but that's a bit hit or miss depending on how exhaustive the indexing is at the libraries in question. For example, Catfantastic II is given the subject tags of 'fantasy fiction -- american', 'cats -- fiction', and 'cats'; but Magicats II is only given 'fantasy fiction -- american'. I think the relative obscurity of 90s-era cat short stories not working in my favor.

[Martini]

This list with fantasy and science fiction about anthropomorphized cats was recently mentioned in another topic:
http://anthrozine.com/site/lbry/cat.n...

[Scott]

Although it doesn't really sound like a horror story, you might take a look at Twists of the Tale: An Anthology of Cat Horror. Some of the stories also appear in Tails of Wonder and Imagination, but not all of them. I've read it but unfortunately it was many years ago and I can't remember if there was a story like that or not.

Also of interest may be the short story "The Test-Tube Creature, Afterward" by Joan Bernott, which appeared in Harlan Ellison's Again, Dangerous Visions.

[Christine]

Well, sorry my suggestion didn't help. I was just hoping that the photos of the actual book covers might spark a memory. Anyway, best of luck!

[M—]

Martini wrote: "This list with fantasy and science fiction about anthropomorphized cats..."

Thank you! I'll give that a browse and see if I spot a familiar plot. I do think I'm probably looking for a short story, and I see that that list focuses on novels, but my memory for details has been (extremely) wrong before so maybe I'll get lucky.

Scott wrote: "Although it doesn't really sound like a horror story..."

The titles in the table of contents don't sound familiar to me, but I'll track down a library copy and see for sure. Thanks!

"...short story "The Test-Tube Creature, Afterward" by Joan Bernott..."

Google is indicating that story features a single cat/human hybrid, not the group dynamic element I'm remembering. I'll add it to the library list anyway. (After all, what's one more to the TBR pile?)

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!top...

Christine wrote: "Well, sorry my suggestion didn't help..."

I'm sorry! I didn't mean to make you feel bad. I'm sure scanning book covers is super helpful to person with visual memories.

[M—]

bump

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

M-, are you still looking for this or did you find it?

[M—]

Confirm still looking; thanks.